Prof. Benjamin Grosof

Transcription

1 E-Services Knowledge Management on the New Generation Web: End-to-End Contracting and Business Process Automation Prof. Benjamin Grosof MIT Sloan School of Management Information Technologies group Slides presented at Harvard University Econ/CS Seminar, May 4, 2004 Host: Prof. David Parkes

2 Quickie Bio of Presenter MIT Sloan professor since years at IBM T.J. Watson Research; 2 years at startups PhD Comp Sci, Stanford; BA Applied Math Econ/Mgmt, Harvard Semantic web services is main research area: Rules as core technology Business Applications, Implications, Strategy: e-contracting/supply-chain; finance; trust; Overall knowledge representation, e-commerce, intelligent agents Co-Founder, Rule Markup Language Initiative the leading emerging standards body in semantic web rules ( Core participant in Semantic Web Services Initiative which coordinates world-wide SWS research and early standards ( Area Editor for Contracts & Negotiation, Language Committee Co-Chair, Industrial Partners program (SWSIP)

3 Outline of Talk Intro: Research on Semantic Web Services (SWS), its Business Uses Rules, contracting, trust, policies Integration, knowledge representation, standards Problem: Reusable Knowledge to Describe Services Technique: knowledge representation to standardize on Content investment: how to leverage legacy business process K New Technical Approach to represent OO Frameworks using SW Courteous Inheritance: default rules increases reuse in ontologies New Strategy: go where the knowledge already is, then work outwards Begin with MIT Process Handbook open-source version in development Example: process knowledge about selling Future: Transformational wrappers around various legacy OO frameworks Roadmapping Market Evolution Early adopters, creators, catalysts Strategic players, forces

4 Next Generation Web Semantic Web Services Semantic Web techniques Automated Knowledge Bases XML Web Services techniques API s on Web Two interwoven aspects: Program: Web Services Data: Semantic Web First Generation Web

5 Some relevant websites ?node= Amazon s web services 1000 s of developers Fidelity s web services for EAI World Wide Web Consortium, e.g., its Web Services and Semantic Web standards Oasis, e.g., its web services standards and ebxml Semantic Web Services Initiative standards 40 partners Rule Markup Language Initiative standards, partners Intl. Semantic Web Conference 400 researchers XBRL extensible Business Reporting Language MIT Process Handbook, Open Process Handbook Initiative

6 Big Questions about the New Generation Web What are the critical features/aspects of the new technology? What business problems does it help solve? What are the likely innovation evolution paths, and associated entrepreneurial opportunities?

7 Some Answers to: Why does SWS Matter to Business? 1. Death. Taxes. Integration. - They re always with us. 2. Business processes require communication between organizations / applications. - Data and programs cross org./app. boundaries, both intra- and inter- enterprise. 3. It s the automated knowledge economy, stupid! - The world is moving towards a knowledge economy. And it s moving towards deeper and broader automation of business processes. The first step is automating the use of structured knowledge. Theme: reuse of knowledge across multiple tasks/app s/org s

8 B2B Tasks: Communication for Business Processes with Partners B2B business processes involving significant Communication with customers/suppliers/other-partners is overall a natural locus for future first impact of SWS. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) sales leads and status customer service info and support Supply Chain Management (SCM): source selection inventories and forecasts problem resolution transportation and shipping, distribution and logistics orders; payments, bill presentation

9 Some B2B Tasks (continued) bids, quotes, pricing, CONTRACTING; AUCTIONS; procurement authorization (vs. authentication) for credit or trust database-y: e.g., catalogs & their merging policies inquiries and answers; live feedback notifications trails of biz processes and interactions ratings, 3rd party reviews, recommendations knowledge management with partners/mkt/society

10 New Research Application Scenarios for Rule-based Semantic Web Services SweetDeal [Grosof & Poon WWW-2003] configurable reusable e-contracts: Represents modular modification of proposals, service provisions LP rules as KR. E.g., prices, late delivery exception handling. On top of DL ontologies about business processes from MIT Process Handbook Evolved from EECOMS pilot on agent-based manufacturing SCM ($51M NIST ATP IBM, Boeing, TRW, Vitria, others) Financial knowledge integration (ECOIN) [Firat, Madnick, & Grosof 2002] Maps between contexts using LP rules, equational ontologies, SQL DB s. Business Policies: Trust management (Delegation Logic) [Li, Grosof, & Feigenbaum 2003]: Extend LP KR to multi-agent delegation. Ex.: security authorization.

11 Our Overall SWS Research Agenda Invent Core Technologies and concepts of the New Generation Web Semantic Web; Rules and RuleML emerging standard supporting knowledge representation theory of Situated Courteous Description Logic Programs Semantic Web Services; Business Process Automation for B2B and EAI Requirements analysis Use of Rules, together with ontologies or to represent ontologies Pilot Business Application Scenarios End-to-end e-contracting, e.g., in manufacturing supply chain SweetDeal approach using rules (plus ontologies) Financial information and reporting: ECOIN approach mapping ontologies Other: security authorization, travel, Analyze Prospective Early Adopter Areas Strategy: Adoption Roadmap; Market Evolution Entrepreneurial Opportunities

12 Where are the Holdups? and Challenges for Research KR & standards to integrate Rules with Ontologies KR, & later standards, to represent Services descriptions using Rules and Ontologies KR & strategy to leverage legacy content, e.g., OO service/process ontologies A rich research area. We are doing much current work on that. Procedural process models aspect of SWS, as underlying foundation Messy, many competing conceptual approaches Realm of slow progress; much energy in WS standards efforts: Oasis WSBPEL, W3C WS Choreography Hookup to negotiation strategies and valuation reasoning -> game theory: In SweetDeal Solo reasoning factored as separate Relevant: Work by Peyman Faratin of MIT Integrate risk management aspects, contract theory -> game theory, other areas of economics A rich research area. We are doing current work on this.

13 OPTIONAL BACKUP SLIDES FOLLOW More about research directions

14 Analysis: High-Level Requirements for SWS Support Biz-Process Communication E.g., B2B SCM, CRM E.g., e-contracts, financial info, trust management. Support SWS Tasks above current WS layers: Discovery/search, invocation, deal negotiation, selection, composition, execution, monitoring, verification

15 New Analysis: Key Technical Requirements for SWS 1. Combine rules with ontologies, from many web sources, with: Rules on top of ontologies Interoperability of heterogeneous rule and ontology systems Power in inferencing Consistency wrt inferencing Scaleability of inferencing 2. Hook rules (with ontologies) up to web services Ex. web services: enterprise applications, databases Rules use services, e.g., to query, message, act with side-effects Rules constitute services executably, e.g., workflow-y business processes Rules describe services non-executably, e.g., for discovery, deal negotiation On top of web service process models, coherently despite evolving messiness

16 3 Areas of New Fundamental KR Theory that enable Key Technical Requirements for SWS 1. Description Logic Programs: KR to combine LP (RuleML) rules on top of DL (OWL) ontologies, with: Power in inferencing (including for consistency) Scaleability of inferencing 2. Situated Logic Programs: KR to hook rules (with ontologies) up to (web) services Rules use services, e.g., to query, message, act with side-effects Rules constitute services executably, e.g., workflow-y business processes 3. Courteous Logic Programs: KR to combine rules from many sources, with: Prioritized conflict handling to enable consistency, modularity; scaleably Interoperable syntax and semantics

17 Research Directions Requirements Analysis Fundamental KR theory, techniques, tools: Courteous LP, Situated LP, Description LP More: nonmon OO ontologies, multi-agent nonmon, equational ontologies, context mappings, Web Services / Business Processes Knowledge Bases: MIT Process Handbook Open-source version coming Standards: Rules (RuleML/DAML), SWS (SWSI) Applications: e-contracting, finance, trust mgm., travel Fundamental theory for e-contracting Strategy wrt SWS uses, adoption, markets

18 Contributions to Early Standards Efforts: RuleML, SWSI RuleML Initiative Co-Lead, Co-Founder RuleML based largely on IBM CommonRules Designed most key RuleML features RuleML already has basic support for Description LP, Situated LP, Courteous LP Active in SWSI, esp. on Rules Member of SWS Language committee Co-chair Industrial Partners forum: several dozen companies Technical challenge: representing service pre- / post-conditions, coherently on top of evolving messiness of WS process models (e.g., BPEL4WS)

19 END OF OPTIONAL BACKUP SLIDES More about research directions

20 OPTIONAL BACKUP SLIDES FOLLOW About what are Semantic Web, Web Services, and Semantic Web Services

21 Web Service -- definition (For purposes of this talk:) A procedure/method that is invoked through a Web protocol interface, typically with XML inputs and outputs

22 Web Services Stack outline NOTES: WSDL is a Modular Interface spec SOAP is Messaging and Runtime Also: - UDDI is for Discovery - BPEL4WS, WSCI, are for transactions - Routing, concurrency, Diagram courtesy Tim Berners-Lee:

23 Semantic Web: concept, approach, pieces Shared semantics when interchange data knowledge Knowledge Representation (cf. AI, DB) as approach to semantics Standardize KR syntax, with KR theory/techniques as backing Web-exposed Databases: SQL; XQuery (XML-data DB s) Challenge: share DB schemas via meta-data RDF: Resource Description Framework W3C proposed standard Meta-data lower-level mechanics: unordered directed graphs (vs. ordered trees) RDF-Schema extension: simple class/property hierarchy, domains/ranges Ontology = formally defined vocabulary & class hierarchy OWL: Ontologies Working Language W3C proposed standard Subsumes RDF-Schema and Entity-Relationship models Based on Description Logic (DL) KR ~subset of First-Order Logic (FOL)) Rules = if-then logical implications, facts ~subsumes SQL DB s RuleML: Rule Markup Language emerging standard Based on Logic Programs (LP) KR ~extension of Horn FOL

24 W3C Semantic Web Stack : Standardization Steps Emerging Standards pioneered in DARPA Agent Markup Language (DAML) program: RuleML OWL Vocabulary Model & Syntax [Diagram is courtesy Tim Berners-Lee]

25 Semantic Web Services Convergence of Semantic Web and Web Services Consensus definition and conceptualization still forming Semantic (Web Services): Knowledge-based service descriptions, deals Discovery/search, invocation, negotiation, selection, composition, execution, monitoring, verification Integrated knowledge (Semantic Web) Services: e.g., infrastructural Knowledge/info/DB integration Inferencing and translation

26 END OF OPTIONAL BACKUP SLIDES About what are Semantic Web, Web Services, and Semantic Web Services

27 Outline of Talk Intro: Research on Semantic Web Services (SWS), its Business Uses Rules, contracting, trust, policies Integration, knowledge representation, standards Problem: Reusable Knowledge to Describe Services Technique: knowledge representation to standardize on Content investment: how to leverage legacy business process K New Technical Approach to represent OO Frameworks using SW Courteous Inheritance: default rules increases reuse in ontologies New Strategy: go where the knowledge already is, then work outwards Begin with MIT Process Handbook open-source version in development Example: process knowledge about selling Future: Transformational wrappers around various legacy OO frameworks Roadmapping Market Evolution Early adopters, creators, catalysts Strategic players, forces

28 Problem: Reusable Knowledge to Has two aspects: Describe Services 1. Technical/technique problem: what form of knowledge? I.e., what knowledge representation to standardize on? 2. Content investment problem: how to leverage to accomplish the reuse of legacy business process knowledge?

29 Outline of Talk Intro: Research on Semantic Web Services (SWS), its Business Uses Rules, contracting, trust, policies Integration, knowledge representation, standards Problem: Reusable Knowledge to Describe Services Technique: knowledge representation to standardize on Content investment: how to leverage legacy business process K New Technical Approach to represent OO Frameworks using SW Courteous Inheritance: default rules increases reuse in ontologies New Strategy: go where the knowledge already is, then work outwards Begin with MIT Process Handbook open-source version in development Example: process knowledge about selling Future: Transformational wrappers around various legacy OO frameworks Roadmapping Market Evolution Early adopters, creators, catalysts Strategic players, forces

30 Opportunity for MIT Process Handbook in SWS Need for Shared Web Services / Business Processes Knowledge Bases MIT Process Handbook as candidate nucleus for shared business process ontology for SWS business processes, + associated class/property concepts, as structured knowledge Open Process Handbook Initiative: an open-source version, is in progress. ( Related: use in particular for E-Contracting Interoperable business objects, business processes Also for policies (e.g., trust), 3 rd -party services

31 Some Specializations of Sell in the MIT Process Handbook (PH)

32 OPTIONAL BACKUP SLIDES FOLLOW About SweetDeal s use of Process Handbook ontology in rule-based e- contracts

33 Some Exceptions in the MIT Process Handbook

34 Some exception handlers in the MIT Process Handbook

35 payment(?r,base,?payment) <- SCLP TextFile Format for RuleML AND price(co123,?p) AND quantity(co123,?q) AND multiply(?p,?q,?payment) ; <drm:imp> <drm:_head> <drm:atom> <drm:_opr><drm:rel>payment</drm:_opr></drm:rel> <drm:tup> <drm:var>r</drm:var> <drm:ind>base</drm:ind> <drm:var>payment</drm:var> </drm:tup></drm:atom> </drm:_head> <drm:_body> <drm:andb> <drm:atom> <drm:_opr> drm = namespace for RuleML <drm:rel href= /> </drm:_opr> <drm:tup> <drm:ind>co123</drm:ind> <drm:var>cust</drm:var> </drm:tup> </drm:atom> </drm:andb> </drm:_body> </drm:imp>

36 Example Contract Proposal, Continued: latedeliverypenalty exception handler module latedeliverypenalty_module { // latedeliverypenalty is an instance of PenalizeForContingency // (and thus of AvoidException, ExceptionHandler, and Process) ; // latedeliverypenalty is intended to avoid exceptions of class // LateDelivery. // penalty = - overduedays * 200 ; (negative payment by buyer) <latedeliverypenalty_def> payment(?r, contingentpenalty,?penalty) <- AND AND AND AND AND shippingdate(?co,?codate) AND shippingdate(?r,?rdate) AND subtract(?rdate,?codate,?overduedays) AND multiply(?overduedays, 200,?Res1) AND multiply(?res1, -1,?Penalty) ; } <latedeliverypenaltyhandlesit(e1)> // specify latedeliverypenalty as a handler for e1

37 Example Contract Proposal, Continued Buyer adds rule modules to the contract proposal to specify: 1. detection of an exception LateDelivery as a potential exception of the contract s process detectlatedelivery as exception handler: recognize occurrence 2. avoidance of an exception (and perhaps also resolution of the exception) latedeliverypenalty as exception handler: penalize per day Rule module = a nameable ruleset a subset of overall rulebase can be included directly and/or imported via link; nestable similar to legal contracts incorporation by reference an extension to RuleML; in spirit of Webizing

38 Example, Continued: Counter-Proposal Seller modifies the draft contract (it s a negotiation!) Simply adds* another rule module to specify: latedeliveryriskpayment as exception handler lump-sum in advance, based on average lateness instead of proportional to actual lateness higher-priority for that module than for the previous proposal, e.g., higher than latedeliverypenalty s rule module Courteous LP s prioritized conflict handling feature is used *NO change to previous proposal s rules needed! similar to legal contracts accumulation of provisions

39 Example Counter-Proposal s ruleset s prioritized conflict handling // priority specified via syntactically reserved overrides predicate overrides(latedeliveryriskpaymenthandlesit(e1), latedeliverypenaltyhandlesit(e1) ) ; // There is at most one avoid handler for a given exception instance. // Consistency is enforced wrt this mutex integrity constraint. MUTEX AND GIVEN AND ;

40 Copyright 2002 by Benjamin Grosof MIT All Rights Reserved Courteous feature: compileable, tractable Courteous compiler courteous mutex representation (Sit.) Courteous LP. * priorities > Tractable compilation: O(n^3), often linear Tractable inference: e.g., worst-case when no ctor s ( Datalog ) & bounded v = var s per rule is equivalent to OLP with v (v+2) equivalent semantically ordinary ( vanilla ) (Sit.)OLP representation Preserves ontology. Plus extra predicates for - phases of prioritized argumentation (refutation, skepticism) - classical negations * classical negation too

41 Overview II: More New Contributions 1. Combine Situated Courteous Logic Programs (SCLP) case of RuleML with DAML+OIL (close predecessor of OWL); i.e., SCLP + Description Logic (DL) rules "on top of" ontologies show how and why to do as representational style (KR, syntax) DAML+OIL class or property used as predicate in RuleML heavily exploit feature of RuleML that predicate can be a URI in progress: deeper semantics of the combination more generally, 1st combo of nonmon RuleML / SCLP with DL 1st combo of nonmon rules + DL (also Antoniou, independently) 2. Combine further with process descriptions 1st substantial practical e-business application domain scenario for 1., 2. Point of convergence between Semantic Web and Web Services 1st: approach to automate MIT Process Handbook using: a) XML ; b) powerful KR (but encoded only small fraction of its content so far!) underline incapacity of OWL/DAML+OIL to represent default inheritance

42 END OF OPTIONAL BACKUP SLIDES About SweetDeal s use of Process Handbook ontology in rule-based e- contracts

43 OPTIONAL BACKUP SLIDES FOLLOW About Rules for Semantic Web Services, esp. in e-contracting

44 Flavors of Rules Commercially Most Important today in E-Business E.g., in OO app s, DB s, workflows. Relational databases, SQL: Views, queries, facts are all rules. SQL99 even has recursive rules. Production rules (OPS5 heritage): e.g., Blaze, ILOG, Haley: rule-based Java/C++ objects. Event-Condition-Action rules (loose family), cf.: business process automation / workflow tools. active databases; publish-subscribe. Prolog. logic programs as a full programming language. (Lesser: other knowledge-based systems.)

45 Vision: Uses of Rules in E-Business Rules as an important aspect of coming world of Internet e-business: rule-based business policies & business processes, for B2B & B2C. represent seller s offerings of products & services, capabilities, bids; map offerings from multiple suppliers to common catalog. represent buyer s requests, interests, bids; matchmaking. represent sales help, customer help, procurement, authorization/trust, brokering, workflow. high level of conceptual abstraction; easier for non-programmers to understand, specify, dynamically modify & merge. executable but can treat as data, separate from code potentially ubiquitous; already wide: e.g., SQL views, queries. Rules in communicating applications, e.g., embedded intelligent agents.

46 Rule-based Semantic Web Services Rules/LP in appropriate combination with DL as KR, for RSWS DL good for categorizing: a service overall, its inputs, its outputs Rules to describe service process models rules good for representing: preconditions and postconditions, their contingent relationships contingent behavior/features of the service more generally, e.g., exceptions/problems familiarity and naturalness of rules to software/knowledge engineers Rules to specify deals about services: cf. e-contracting.

47 Rule-based Semantic Web Services Rules often good to executably specify service process models e.g., business process automation using procedural attachments to perform side-effectful/state-changing actions ("effectors" triggered by drawing of conclusions) e.g., rules obtain info via procedural attachments ("sensors" test rule conditions) e.g., rules for knowledge translation or inferencing e.g., info services exposing relational DBs Infrastructural: rule system functionality as services: e.g., inferencing, translation

48 Commercial Implementation & Piloting IBM CommonRules: AlphaWorks Java library implements rule-based capabilities: XML inter-operability; prioritized conflict handling Rule Markup Language: nascent industry standards effort XML Knowledge Representation (KR) make the Web be Semantic KR: Situated Courteous Logic Programs in XML EECOMS industry consortium including Boeing, Baan, TRW, Vitria, IBM, universities, small companies $29Million ; 50% funded by NIST ATP application piloted contracting & negotiation; authorization & trust

49 Also Currently Being Developed Delegations between agents XML Ontologies (Vocabularies ) in the world today knowledge representation: infer with definitional knowledge specific domain/industry vocabularies DARPA Agent Markup Language: ontologies, rules Industry Standards: Web, incl. Web services Agents, Business Processes, Workflow E-Commerce: ebxml,... Industry-Specific Legal XML Law: Electronic Signatures, Reusable Contract doc s on Web: CommonAccord, our work,...

50 END OF OPTIONAL BACKUP SLIDES About Rules for Semantic Web Services, esp. in e-contracting

51 Outline of Talk Intro: Research on Semantic Web Services (SWS), its Business Uses Rules, contracting, trust, policies Integration, knowledge representation, standards Problem: Reusable Knowledge to Describe Services Technique: knowledge representation to standardize on Content investment: how to leverage legacy business process K New Technical Approach to represent OO Frameworks using SW Courteous Inheritance: default rules increases reuse in ontologies New Strategy: go where the knowledge already is, then work outwards Begin with MIT Process Handbook open-source version in development Example: process knowledge about selling Future: Transformational wrappers around various legacy OO frameworks Roadmapping Market Evolution Early adopters, creators, catalysts Strategic players, forces

52 New Technical Approach: Courteous Inheritance in the Process Handbook Use SW KR and standards to represent Object-Oriented framework knowledge: class hierarchy, types, generalization-specialization, domain & range, properties/methods association with classes Surprise: use SW rule language not the main SW ontology language! I.e., use RuleML not OWL. Exploit RuleML s nonmonotonic ability to represent prioritized default reasoning as kind of knowledge representation (KR)

53 New Technical Approach, continued Courteous Inheritance KR is built simply on top of the (Situated) Courteous Logic Programs KR of RuleML A few dozen background axioms. Linear-size reformulation. Inferencing is tractable computationally. Particularly: represent PH's structured part a scheme specific to PH s flavor of OO PH becomes a SWS process ontology repository to be combined, fed, used with/by other SWS Kill two birds with one stone: form of K that facilitates leveraging of legacy process K content including PH, OO

54 New Technical Approach, continued more Example(s): selling, PO, price, shipping, delivery, payment, lateness. For details, see submitted paper Beyond Monotonic Inheritance: Towards Semantic Web Process Ontologies on webpage. Example: selling process

55 Brief Tour of selling example in the paper.

56 Outline of Talk Intro: Research on Semantic Web Services (SWS), its Business Uses Rules, contracting, trust, policies Integration, knowledge representation, standards Problem: Reusable Knowledge to Describe Services Technique: knowledge representation to standardize on Content investment: how to leverage legacy business process K New Technical Approach to represent OO Frameworks using SW Courteous Inheritance: default rules increases reuse in ontologies New Strategy: go where the knowledge already is, then work outwards Begin with MIT Process Handbook open-source version in development Example: process knowledge about selling Future: Transformational wrappers around various legacy OO frameworks Roadmapping Market Evolution Early adopters, creators, catalysts Strategic players, forces

57 Larger Approach: Transformation Wrappers for OO Frameworks New Strategy: go where the knowledge already is, then work outwards Future: Transformational wrappers around various legacy OO frameworks C++ Java, C# UML Can use XSLT, SW tools, and/or XQuery engines to implement the transformations, guided by SWS ontology standardization practices

58 Outline of Talk Intro: Research on Semantic Web Services (SWS), its Business Uses Rules, contracting, trust, policies Integration, knowledge representation, standards Problem: Reusable Knowledge to Describe Services Technique: knowledge representation to standardize on Content investment: how to leverage legacy business process K New Technical Approach to represent OO Frameworks using SW Courteous Inheritance: default rules increases reuse in ontologies New Strategy: go where the knowledge already is, then work outwards Begin with MIT Process Handbook open-source version in development Example: process knowledge about selling Future: Transformational wrappers around various legacy OO frameworks Roadmapping Market Evolution Early adopters, creators, catalysts Strategic players, forces

59 Some relevant example companies Users: *Amazon, Fidelity, Boeing; UPS, GM, *Orbitz, ebay Vendors: IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, HP, BEA, SAP; Sun, *Compiere Standards-oriented organizations: *SWSI, *BPMI, *OPHI, UN CEFACT

60 Some More relevant websites Business Process Management Initiative Orbitz, e.g., their vacation travel packages Compiere open source ERP

61 Market Evolution: Discussion Questions Existing and prospective early adopters Importance of open source content: seems to be an assumption/axiom for many people Prospective sources of open source content

62 Strategy Questions for Discussion? Who/players: adopters, creators, catalysts?? What forces/drivers for acceleration of adoption or investment, vs. inertia?? Which additional interesting questions?

63 Yet More Discussion Questions: Early Adoption Application Prospects for SWS What business applications do you think are likely or interesting? By vertical industry domain, e.g., health care or security By task, e.g., authorization By kind of shared information, e.g., patient records By aspect of business relationships, e.g., provider network What do you think are entrepreneurial opportunity areas?

64 WRAP-UP: Outline of Talk Intro: Research on Semantic Web Services (SWS), its Business Uses Rules, contracting, trust, policies Integration, knowledge representation, standards Problem: Reusable Knowledge to Describe Services Technique: knowledge representation to standardize on Content investment: how to leverage legacy business process K New Technical Approach to represent OO Frameworks using SW Courteous Inheritance: default rules increases reuse in ontologies New Strategy: go where the knowledge already is, then work outwards Begin with MIT Process Handbook open-source version in development Example: process knowledge about selling Future: Transformational wrappers around various legacy OO frameworks Roadmapping Market Evolution Early adopters, creators, catalysts Strategic players, forces

65 OPTIONAL BACKUP SLIDES FOLLOW About early adopter prospects in SWS

66 SW Early Adoption Candidates: High-Level View Death. Taxes. Integration. Application/Info Integration: Intra-enterprise EAI, M&A; XML infrastructure trend Inter-enterprise E-Commerce: procurement, SCM Combo Business partners, extranet trend

67 SWS Adoption Roadmap: Strategy Considerations Expect see beginning in a lot of B2B interoperability or heterogeneous-info-integration intensive (e.g., finance, travel) Actually, probably 1 st intra-enterprise, e.g., EAI Reduce costs of communication in procurement, operations, customer service, supply chain ordering and logistics increase speed, creates value, increases dynamism macro effects create stability sometimes (e.g., supply chain reactions due to lag; other negative feedbacks) volatility sometimes (e.g., perhaps financial market swings) increase flexibility, decrease lock-in Agility in business processes, supply chains

68 SW Early Adopters: Areas by Industry or Task Early SW techniques already in use: e-contracting, supply chain incl. procurement manufacturing, e.g. computer/electronics (RosettaNet), automotive (Covisint), EECOMS pilot (Boeing, IBM, TRW, Baan) office supplies (OBI) retailing: shopbots and salesbots: comparisons, recommendations extensive standards activity: Oasis ebxml, XML econtracts, UN UBL, EDI

69 SW Early Adopters: Areas by Industry or Task Continued: Early SW techniques already in use: cyber goods: financial services (rules; onto translation) travel "agency", i.e.: tickets, packages (AI smarts for scheduling) military intelligence (e.g., funded DAML)

70 END OF OPTIONAL BACKUP SLIDES About early adopter prospects in SWS

71 OPTIONAL SLIDES FOLLOW About Presenter s SWS Research Agenda

72 Quickie Bio of Presenter MIT Sloan professor since years at IBM T.J. Watson Research; 2 years at startups PhD Comp Sci, Stanford; BA Applied Math Econ/Mgmt, Harvard Semantic web services is main research area: Rules as core technology Business Applications, Implications, Strategy: e-contracting/supply-chain; finance; trust; Overall knowledge representation, e-commerce, intelligent agents Co-Founder, Rule Markup Language Initiative the leading emerging standards body in semantic web rules ( Core participant in Semantic Web Services Initiative which coordinates world-wide SWS research and early standards ( Area Editor for Contracts & Negotiation, Language Committee Co-Chair, Industrial Partners program (SWSIP)

73 More about our SWS Technical Research Agenda Requirements Analysis (Biz Tech) New Application scenarios: e.g., SweetDeal e-contracting Integrating rules, ontologies from many sources Interoperability, power, consistency, scaleability New Fundamental Theory (Theory Tech) Description Logic Programs: bridging rules and ontologies Situated Logic Programs: hooking rules to services Courteous Logic Programs: prioritized conflict handling More: Contributions to Early Standards Efforts: RuleML, SWSI Piloting Early Adopter Areas: E-Contracts/SCM, Finance, Travel Strategy Considerations and Implications

74 Analysis: High-Level Requirements for SWS Support Biz-Process Communication E.g., B2B SCM, CRM E.g., e-contracts, financial info, trust management. Support SWS Tasks above current WS layers: Discovery/search, invocation, deal negotiation, selection, composition, execution, monitoring, verification

75 New Analysis: Key Technical Requirements for SWS 1. Combine rules with ontologies, from many web sources, with: Rules on top of ontologies Interoperability of heterogeneous rule and ontology systems Power in inferencing Consistency wrt inferencing Scaleability of inferencing 2. Hook rules (with ontologies) up to web services Ex. web services: enterprise applications, databases Rules use services, e.g., to query, message, act with side-effects Rules constitute services executably, e.g., workflow-y business processes Rules describe services non-executably, e.g., for discovery, deal negotiation On top of web service process models, coherently despite evolving messiness

76 3 Areas of New Fundamental KR Theory that enable Key Technical Requirements for SWS 1. Description Logic Programs: KR to combine LP (RuleML) rules on top of DL (OWL) ontologies, with: Power in inferencing (including for consistency) Scaleability of inferencing 2. Situated Logic Programs: KR to hook rules (with ontologies) up to (web) services Rules use services, e.g., to query, message, act with side-effects Rules constitute services executably, e.g., workflow-y business processes 3. Courteous Logic Programs: KR to combine rules from many sources, with: Prioritized conflict handling to enable consistency, modularity; scaleably Interoperable syntax and semantics

77 OPTIONAL SLIDES FOLLOW About Semantic Web, Web Services

78 Some Semantic Web Advantages for Biz Builds upon XML s much greater capabilities (vs. HTML*) for structured detailed descriptions that can be processed automatically. Eases application development effort for assimilation of data in inter-enterprise interchange Knowledge-Based E-Markets -- where Agents Communicate (Agent = knowledge-based application) potential to revolutionize interactivity in Web marketplaces: B2B, Reuse same knowledge for multiple purposes/tasks/app s Exploit declarative KR; Schemas * new version of HTML itself is now just a special case of XML

79 SWS Language effort, on top of Current WS Standards Stack Wire Protocols Service Description W3C WS Choreography Group BPEL4WS (Microsoft, IBM, BEA) WSCL (HP)BPML (Most but Microsoft) WSCI (Sun, BEA, Yahoo, ) XLANG (Microsoft), WSFL (IBM), SOAP Blocks SOAP/XMLP SWS Language Process SWS Initiative (SWSI) -- automate Tasks of: Discovery Invocation Interoperation Deal Negotiation Composition Monitoring Verification XML HTTP/SMTP TCP/IP WSDL Extensions WSDL XML Registry (UDDI) Inspection [Slide authors: Benjamin Grosof (MIT Sloan), Sheila McIlraith (Stanford), David Martin (SRI International), James Snell (IBM)]